No More Learning

If the poetry which Herbert
sent, on his deathbed, by John Duncon to Nicholas Ferrar, was
a picture, as he said, of his spiritual conflicts, the prose of A
Priest to the Temple was an image of country tranquillity, bright
and simple like the flowers of the field which he loved, and
fragrant like the incense which he tells the parson to use on high
festivals. The Country Parson marks an epoch in English
literature. It shows character drawing at its perfection, and the
character that is chosen is that of a profession which, transformed
by the reformation, had stamped on itself a peculiar mark, of
breadth and dutifulness and out-of-door piety, which, happily and
for generations, embodied a spirit that was English as well as
Christian in the lives of the English clergy. The publication of
the book may well have had not a little effect in bringing about
the restoration of the church with that of the king; for it showed
men how liberal, how tolerant and candid, how kindly and rational,
could that church be which the triumph of the sects had tem-
porarily superseded. Not many books, indeed, have made so deep
or abiding an impression. It has endowed the memory of its


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William Laud
157
author with a peculiar claim to the affection of Englishmen. And
it sums up the influence which men like Ferrar and Duncon and
Traherne, like Hammond and Sanderson, were quietly exercising,
amid days of disturbance, in the byways of English life.
This influence, it will already have been observed, is connected
at point after point with the name of the dominating personality
in the English church during the reign of Charles I, the determined
and masterful archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. Laud
was the disciple of Andrewes, whom he regarded as his master in
theology and the light of the Christian world. ' He preached Donne's
funeral sermon.
He ordained Nicholas Ferrar. He was the con-
siderate patron of Sanderson, Hales and Chillingworth. Thus, he
linked the men of the new age to the times of the great Elizabeth.
For he himself belonged undoubtedly to the system, theological
and political, of the last of the Tudors. Brought up when England
was stirred by the victory over the Armada, trained at Oxford by
those who rejected another foreign influence, the dominant Calvin-
ism, he gave his whole loyalty to the English church and king
as national institutions yet related to a wider religious and political
world.
His first literary work was as an anti-Roman controversialist.
In 1622, he engaged in one of the common theological duels of the
day, defending the cause of the English church. The book re-
cording it came out first in 1624, was reissued more fully in 1639
and appeared in two more editions before the end of the seventeenth
century. It became the standard defence of Anglicanism against
Rome, and, as such, was recommended by Charles I to his children;
and it laid down the lines on which controversy of this nature has
proceeded practically down to the present day. The church, whether
at Rome or in London, is the same church-'one in substance but
not one in condition of state and purity. ' Rome has no ground of
infallibility or universality: the eastern church as well as the
reformation is a standing refutation of such an assertion. Laud
declares England's adherence to the creeds and the fundamental
unaltered doctrines of the church. His position with regard to
the Bible is the typical Anglican one, acceptance, submission, not
idolatry; and 'the key that lets men into the Scriptures, even to
this knowledge of them that are the Word of God, is the tradition
of the church. ' Protestants have not left the church of Rome in
her essence but in her errors'; and, to set matters right, the appeal
must be to a true general council, or, till that may be had, to the
Bible. Meanwhile, the church of England stands for liberty,


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a
enforces not its articles as necessary to salvation, and is secure in
the confidence that
to believe the Scripture and the Creeds, to believe these in the sense of the
ancient primitive Church, to receive the four great General Councils, to believe
all points of doctrine generally received as fundamental in the Church of
Christ, is a faith in which to live and die cannot but give salvation.
Laud, as a controversialist, is the true successor of Andrewes,
and his whole attitude, as well as his particular quotations, shows
him to be a disciple of Hooker. As a controversialist, he is, to
some extent, in contrast to Richard Mountague, a man of his own
age and school, who is happily described by Fuller in the words
'very sharp the nib of his pen, and much gall mingled in his ink,
against such as opposed him. ' Mountague, who afterwards, by
Laud's influence, became a bishop, was famed for his tart tracts
A New Gag for an old Goose who would needs undertake to stop
all Protestants' mouths even with 276 places out of their own
English Bible; Appello Caesarem: a Just Appeal from two Unjust
Informers; and a treatise on the invocation of saints with the title
Immediate Address unto God alone. In each of these he antici-
pates a good deal that modern writers have advanced as new; his
general position is that of Laud and Andrewes, asserting the
'catholicity' of the English church ; and his manner is biting and
epigrammatic, as he stands ‘in the gap against Puritanism and
Popery, the Scylla and Charybdis of ancient Piety. But the im-
portance of Mountague in English history is theological and, perhaps
even more, political, rather than literary. He is in style and
language a man of his age, and his age has better men in both.
He was not an influence on others. He stood rather at the wing
of the anti-Roman army of writers, and the permanent impression
was made by men who, if not more learned-for Mountague was
well read and won the admiration of the pedant king James-were
more sober and, therefore, more effective. The other wing of the
army is well represented by Joseph Hall, bishop, satirist, poet,
preacher, as well as controversialist. In 1640, he issued, with
Laud's approbation and assistance, his Episcopacy by Divine
Right Asserted, which is anti-presbyterian. He declares the
supreme authority of bishops to be from Christ and 'both universal
and unalterable. ' His meditations or contemplations' are of more
permanent value: they have been reprinted again and again, and
have passed into the stock material of Anglican devotions, marked,
as they are, by that quiet reticence and sobriety, relieved by
quaint humorous touches, which, since the time of Sir Thomas


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William Laud
159
9
More, at least, seem to us, in such matters, to be typically
English.
In all this we are still close to the name of Laud, and, because
all the English theological literature of his day is more or less
connected with him, we may pause to consider his sermons as
typical of those of the reign of Charles I.
The sermons that are preserved are but seven, and they were
all preached on special occasions. Thus, they may not be typical
of the preacher's ordinary manner, for he preached often and ad
populum: here, we find him at court, where a certain stiffness and
freedom in quotation from fathers and classics were expected.
They were recognised at the time to be in the Bishop of
Winchester's manner,' but they have not Andrewes's spiritual
beauty. The text is most carefully analysed, dissected,'crumbled':
it is often made to bear more than it can hold. The thesis is put
clearly, and often repeated for emphasis. The illustrations are
from medieval writers as well as the early fathers: moderns, outside
England, are little used, except Calvin—whom everybody knew
and expected to hear referred to. But, most characteristic of the
writer and, to some extent, of the school to which he belonged, are
two outstanding features in every sermon. Laud continually refers
to the psalms or lessons of the day; he was so familiar with the
church's daily services that he naturally took them as providing
each day with its lesson from God, and that lesson should be the
first he would employ for application or illustration. This was
personal to the man: it occurs again and again in his diary and
tinges his prayers. A second feature is historical allusion. Laud
was more historical, perhaps, than strictly theological in his outlook.
English society came before him as an ordered system which had
its roots in the past, its analogies with foreign developments, its
debts to dead heroes and saints, its best hopes in imitations of the
good things of byegone ages. This thought is shown abundantly in
historical reference, be it to Julius Caesar, Frederic stupor mundi,
or Saladin, and even the quotations of which all the writers of the
age were fond have, in his case, it seems, a special direction: they
emphasise precedent as a part of the divine ordering of the
world.
Such is what one finds expressed very clearly, very pointedly,
very emphatically, in the writings of Charles I's chief religious
adviser. Two of those who may be regarded as Laud's disciples
reflect his thoughts and his manner-William Juxon and William
Sancroft. The former published but one or two sermons, of no


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particular merit save that of consistent Anglicanism. The latter
did not issue his attack on Calvinism till just before the restora-
tion (1658), and belongs, from a literary point of view, entirely
to the later Caroline age; yet he must be just mentioned here
because all that he wrote shows Laud's influence, and it was he
chiefly who sought to preserve the archbishop's memory by the
faithful publication of his literary remains the little Diary and
the long, weary, but indomitable, record of his Troubles and
Tryal.
Besides these, there were, of course, many minor Laudians
some, in their writings, like Roger Mainwaring, of political rather
than literary fame; others, such as William Strode, with a nice
taste in poetry which showed itself happily in their sermons;
others, again, like Richard Steward, one of the many notable
fellows of All Souls who bore their part in the Laudian movement
and stood for the king, with the church party, throughout the war
and in exile. He held office after office, and, at last, the deanery
of Westminster—where, however, he never secured possession.
He was prominent among those who destroyed the influence of
Calvin at Oxford and handed on the influence of Laud to the next
generation. He has already been named among the notable
preachers. Others who left few remains must not be forgotten.
The circle of the primate's friends and disciples was a wide one.
At the fringe of the literary and ecclesiastical party which
looked to Laud as teacher and patron were wits like Abraham
Wright, whose Five Sermons (1656) most cleverly took off the
different styles of his age, and showed the difference between
‘ship board breeding and the Universities'; and Giles Widdowes,
author of The Lawless Kneeless Schismatical Puritan (a blow
for lawyer Prynne), but, as Anthony à Wood tells us,
a harmless and honest man, a noted disputant, well read in the schoolmen,
and as conformable to and zealous in the established discipline of the Church
of England as any person of his time, yet of so odd and strange parts that
few or none could be compared to him.
With not a few affinities in character to men such as these, but
strikingly unlike them in the nature of his literary work, there
stands a writer whose powers have not even yet been fully
appreciated. John Gauden is one of the most remarkable figures
in the literary history of his time. A singularly adroit ecclesiastic,
who was of the parliament's party and yet not wholly repugnant
to Laud, he was as well abused as any clergyman of his day—which
is saying a great deal—but no man had a better skill in retort.


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Eikon Basilike
161
His little known Anti-Baal-Berith or The Binding of the
Covenant and all Covenanters to their good behaviour (1661) is as
clever and amusing a piece of controversial writing as the seven-
teenth century produced. Its sledge-hammer blows recall Martin
Marprelate, and yet it never descends to mere scurrility. One feels
that Gauden knew extraordinarily well how far he might go and
carry people with him. And this is true, in as striking a way, of
his Sermon preached in St Paul's Church London before the Right
Honourable the Lord Mayor, Lord General, Aldermen etc. on
February 28, 1659 (1660), the day when there was public thanks-
giving for the return of the Rump. It is a most verbose and skilful-
the verbosity itself is skill-expression of what everybody at the
moment was feeling, and what the great persons of his audience
particularly wished to hear, as to the way of 'healing the hurts of
the kingdom. ' Not a word that men could have him by the heels
for is there in it: no indiscreet references to the late king, or the
late protector, or the young man Charles Stewart; but just those
hints which go far enough to lead the hearers a little further,
because they show which way popular feeling is turning. No man
ever expressed with more fidelity the thoughts of his generation
than John Gauden.
It is almost impossible to resist bis claim to the authorship of
the most important book of the day, Eikon Basilike, a “portraiture
of his Sacred Majesty in his Sufferings. ' Internal and external
evidence have been weighed again and again, as often as in the
instance of the Casket letters, and it is difficult, indeed, to put
aside the cumulative force of the facts. The long literary con-
troversy which the claim occasioned has lasted to the present
day. Briefly summarised, it turns upon the second-hand evidence
of those who are said to have seen parts of the book in the
handwriting of Charles I, and the counter-assertion of Gauden
that he was himself the author, and upon the remarkable and
detailed resemblance to his own writings. There is certainly
no conclusive evidence that it was the work of the king. On
the other hand, it is undoubtedly a masterpiece of expression
of his principles, his personal feelings, his prejudices, his piety,
his prerogative as it appeared to him at his moments of greatest
sincerity and exaltation. Idealised, it undoubtedly is. Charles,
perhaps, had never so deep a feeling of what kingship might mean
to its worshippers. But a man who loved Shakespeare as Charles
did may well have been inspired by his sufferings to write above
the level of his constant thoughts. And it is at least possible that
11
E. L. VII.
CH. VI.


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Eikon may be even more of a mosaic than it seems. The author
knew what Charles had said on public occasions, and used it; he
knew what the king felt on public questions; he knew what such
a man, the disciple of Laud, the devout attendant at Anglican
worship, would feel at a time of personal distress and imprisonment.
The result is an incomparable picture of a stedfast prince, who
acknowledges his weakness yet asserts the purity of his motives,
the truth of his political and religious principles, the supremacy
of his conscience. Such a dramatic presentment would not be
above the ability of Gauden: and it is quite possible that he
had before him, when he wrote, actual meditations, prayers and
memoranda of the king, which perished when they had been copied
and had found their place in the masterly mosaic.
Few books have had greater influence in English history. Forty-
seven editions of it were produced with surprising rapidity: those
who tried to answer it-Milton among them—failed utterly to
obliterate the impression it had created. The dull attempts at
dignity and splendour which tried to relieve the exasperating
vigilance and laborious monotony of the protectorate government
and court were entirely powerless in face of this appealing pathos.
The Stewart romance, which was to colour English history for
another century, had its strongest impetus from this wonderful
little book. The merit of the style is its simplicity and directness.
It speaks straight to the heart. Eikon Basilike is, indeed, among
the masterpieces of the age which produced the religion and
the literature of Nicholas Ferrar and of George Herbert.
If Eikon Basilike is one of the most important books in
English history, no
rank its author among the
immortals. But the last of the Caroline divines whom we shall
name has a claim to that title. Jeremy Taylor may be regarded
as the finished product of the school of Laud. It was Laud
who procured him his fellowship at All Souls, and to whom
his famous sermon on the Gunpowder plot was dedicated;
and Laud's influence, at once in its attachment to ancient
standards, in its antagonism to the theology of Rome and in its
breadth of toleration, is evident in all his writings. His was a full
life: he went through much affliction, and he had many consolations ;
he was an ardent scholar, a popular preacher, a bishop, a man of
affairs; and all these experiences are reflected in books which are
the most famous of all the work of the Caroline divines. No one
of all that distinguished body, whose position in that age was
summed up in the oft-quoted phrase clerus Anglicanus stupor
one
can


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Jeremy Taylor
163
mundi, was more eminent in his own day, and no one, except
George Herbert, has so certainly won permanent place in the
literature of England. He wrote voluminously; and few men who
have written so much have left more books that still retain
their value: the sermons, ingenious, fertile, convincing ; Ductor
Dubitantium, still the only English treatise of any importance on
its subject? ; the charm of The Marriage Ring; the piety of The
Golden Grove; the sagacious, corrective, kindling, instruction of
Holy Living and Holy Dying and The Worthy Communicant-
these are the abiding possession of the English people. Jeremy
Taylor's controversial work has passed out of consideration with the
greater part of all writing of the same kind that was contemporary
with it: perhaps no English controversialist in theology save Hooker
has secured a permanent place in English literature. Taylor's
theology is of his age: his learning would not preserve his books from
oblivion. But he remains a vital force in English letters, because
of the wonderful combination of fine qualities which he possesses.
Coleridge placed him among the four masters of early seventeenth
century literature, with Shakespeare, Bacon and Milton; and later
judgment shows no sign of reversing the verdict. But his character,
as a writer, is very specially his own. First and obviously, by pro-
fession he was an Anglican priest. He had the ecclesiastical temper
and the spiritual insight which befit his profession; and, in his firm
adherence to the fundamentals of the Christian faith, combined
with a wide tolerance in interpretation, a desire to admit and not
to exclude, like Hales and Chillingworth and Laud, he was a typical
Anglican of Charles I's day. Tradition, authority, faith, liberality,
were harmonious, not contending, in his mind. Secondly, he
was not less certainly a man of letters. His style is intensely
artificial, not in the sense of insincerity, but in the sense of
laborious achievement which has become facility and freedom. It
is intensely individual. There are in it points of comparison with
Sir Thomas Browne, with Donne, with Traherne, even with Burton;
but the curiously mingled simplicity and gorgeousness are all his
own. No one can, like Taylor, pile up splendour of description,
exotic richness of phraseology, colour, tones instinct with music,
and then turn in an instant to a sober, solemn, stately simplicity,
direct and appealing like the call of a herald. Again, in his use
of the ancient classics, if he is a man of his time, he works with
a distinction of his own. Now, he translates literally, incorporating
the result in his own text; now, he quotes, now, paraphrases; but
1 See, post, chap. XII.
11-2


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>
he always handles his author as though he were familiar with him
and loved him. Whether it be the Greek Anthology, or Petronius,
or a Christian Father, he regards the book with a delicate appre-
a
ciation which comes of pure passion for literature in itself. His
taste is all-embracing, and he has an extraordinary aptitude for
applying it to the matter, however far away, which, for the moment,
is occupying his mind. Thus, you may often call his references, or his
analogies, far fetched: but, when you look more closely into the
texture of his argument, you will see how fitly as well as how
adroitly he has woven them in. This breadth of sympathy made
Mason call him the Shakespeare of English prose. ' The description
is an extremely happy one. He is rhetorical like a dramatist.
He abounds in arresting phrases, in haunting verbal felicities. He
can be magnificent, and he can be most deeply pathetic. And,
perhaps above all, his language is astoundingly popular and modern.
To compare his prose with Milton's is to find one's self in a world
of freedom as contrasted with the four walls of the scholar's
study.
You cannot read Jeremy Taylor without feeling that, in spite
of his preciosity, he is, in intention, before all things intensely
practical ; to this aim even his delight in expression and allusion
yields again and again. You come continually on passages, for
example, like that in which, after a list of diseases and a mention
of Maecenas, he writes thus :
It was a cruel mercy in Tamerlane, who commanded all the leprous
persons to be put to death, as we knock some beasts quickly on their head, to
put them quickly out of pain, and lest they should live miserably: the poor
men would rather have endured another leprosy, and have more willingly
taken two diseases than one death. Therefore Caesar wondered that the old
crazed soldier begged leave he might kill himself, and asked him, 'dost
thou think then to be more alive than now thou art? ' We do not die
suddenly, but we descend to death by steps and slow passages; and therefore
men, so long as they are sick, are unwilling to proceed and go forward in
the finishing that sad employment. Between a disease and death there are
many degrees, and all those are like the reserves of evil things, the declining
of every one of which is justly reckoned among those good things, which
alleviate the sickness and make it tolerable. Never account that sickness
intolerable, in which thou hadst rather remain than die: and yet if thou hadst
rather die than suffer it, the worst of it that can be said is this, that this
sickness is worse than death; that is, it is worse than that which is the best
of all evils, and the end of all troubles; and then you have said no great
harm against it1.
Taylor, it is true, had a variety of style. It is possible to
trace 'periods' in his literary manner, as it is to distinguish
a
1 Holy Dying, chap. III.


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Jeremy Taylor
165
the tone in which he dealt with different topics. He was a
controversialist and historian in The Sacred order and offices
of Episcopacy (1642); an advocate of toleration in The Liberty
of Prophesying (1647); purely a spiritual teacher in The
Great Exemplar (a life of Christ, 1649), Holy Living (1650),
Holy Dying (1651) and The Worthy Communicant (1660); an
opponent of Rome in many treatises, a defender of Anglicanism
in others; but, in all, he was a man of wide outlook, of temperate
mind and of warm heart. Why Taylor has always been popular,
has been, indeed, the Bunyan of the English church, is that he
obviously felt all he said, and was stirred by the very passion which
he sought to infuse into others. His work is not regular, his style
is hardly chastened; yet his feeling is restrained within limits
which not a few writers of his time transgressed to their peril. He
is intense in feeling, up to the very verge of legitimate expression;
he hardly ever oversteps it. His style is the servant, not the master,
of the conviction or the passion which breathes in every page that
he writes
When we survey the period of English prose of which Jeremy
Taylor is the brightest ornament, we are struck by the fact that
the divines of Charles I's day were conspicuously English Spanish
influence had passed by; French had hardly yet come, as it came
thirty years later; Latin and Greek were still potent, but chiefly
because they had taught men to write English. English they were,
and, though some of those of whom we have spoken had died before
'the troubles,' and the voices of almost all were temporarily silenced
during the years after Charles's death, their influence was powerful
in the next generation-a generation enthusiastic for both church
and king.


## p. 166 (#182) ############################################

CHAPTER VII
JOHN BUNYAN.
ANDREW MARVELL
THE great civil war of the seventeenth century, while revo-
lutionising English constitutional government, effected, also, an
important break in the historical continuity of English literature.
The years between 1640 and 1660, being years of prolonged and
intense conflict, constitute, in the main, a distinct and well defined
interval between the writers of the days of Elizabeth and James
and those of the restoration. Above all other periods in our
history, it was the age of the pamphleteer, of the writer who is
concerned rather with the urgent needs of the hour than with
the purpose of creating or developing the higher forms of
literature. His aim was to reach the public mind directly and at
once, and so shape the national policy at critical moments in
the nation's life. What literature there might be of more per-
manent sort was the intellectual product of a generation which
had either disappeared or was fast disappearing. Even Milton, re-
cognised, as he is, as the great poet of the restoration, may, more
properly, be said to belong to an earlier time. For the educative
forces which shaped him, and the creative impulse which finally
determined his path to fame, had exercised their influence upon
him before ever the war began. All that is most characteristic of
his genius belongs to the time when books were written to be read
by scholars, and when classical learning gave form and pressure
to English style. Very much the same thing may be said of
Andrew Marvell. For, while his literary reputation rests mainly,
if not exclusively, on poems not published till 1681, or three
years after his death, they were actually composed, with few
exceptions, during the early years of his manhood. They were
the product of a time when Donne's poetry, with its elaborate
conceits and recondite analogies, was the fashion of the hour, and
Donne himself the accepted poet of the younger men of the time,


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John Bunyan
167
6
the leader by whose style and manner they were consciously, or
unconsciously, influenced.
Taking into account, then, the effect of this hiatus in the
literary continuity of the seventeenth century, it is not surprising
that, in the succeeding period, we come upon writers who belong
to no special class or school, and whose literary genealogy cannot
be traced. Three names suggest themselves as furnishing illus-
trations of the kind: John Bunyan, who, with his vivid descriptions
of character, his quaint turns of thought and his racy English style,
stands alone ; Daniel Defoe, with his unrivalled power of clothing
with an air of reality the creations of his imagination; and
Jonathan Swift, whose style defies description or classification,
and, as he puts the case himself, whose English was his own. '
John Bunyan, in creative genius the most gifted of the three, was,
in educational advantages, the least favoured. Born in 1628, in
the Bedfordshire village of Elstow, the son of an artisan, a brasier
by trade, he was put to school, he tells us, to learn both to read
and write 'according to the rate of other poor men's children';
but, to his shame, he says, he has to confess he soon lost that
little he learnt, even almost utterly. ' Probably, if he had been
bent on continuing the modest acquirements of the village school,
he would have had small opportunity, for work at his father's
forge began early, and literature was as scanty as leisure. Most
likely, he was describing the kind of book within his own reach
in those days when, in after years, he represents one of his
characters as saying, 'Give me a ballad, a news-book, George on
horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book that
teaches curious arts, that tells old fables. ' And, even if books of
a higher class of literature had been within his reach, opportunity
for study scarcely could have been; for, during the civil war, the
army regulation age was from sixteen to sixty, and in the very
month in which Bunyan completed his sixteenth year he was
drafted into service as a soldier in the parliamentary army. As
we now know from the recently discovered muster-rolls of the
garrison, he was on military duty at Newport Pagnell from
November 1644 to June 1647. He was here under the command
of Sir Samuel Luke, parliamentary scout master general, the
puritan knight whom Butler, in his well known satire, lampooned
as Sir Hudibras. And it is curious to notice, by the way, that
Bunyan, the writer of puritan books, and Butler, the merciless
satirist of puritan types, were both of them, at one and the same
time, in the service of the same worthy of Cople Woodend—the
>


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168
John Bunyan
one as a soldier in the garrison and the other as tutor or secretary
in his household
On his release from military service in 1647, Bunyan returned
to his native village, and married a year or two later. It is in
connection with this event in his life that he first refers to any
influence which books may have had over him. His wife, he
tells us,
had for her part The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and The Practice
of Piety which her father had left her when he died. In these two books I
should sometimes read with her, wherein I also found some things that were
somewhat pleasing to me.
A year or two later, he came under a more potent influence. One
day he happened to fall into the company of a poor man who
did talk pleasantly of the Scriptures. Wherefore, falling into some love and
liking to what he said, I betook me to my Bible and began to take great pleasure
in reading; but especially with the historical part thereof. For as for Paul's
Epistles, and such like Scriptures, I could not away with them.
As yet, he had not entered upon that deep religious experience,
those intense struggles of soul, which he has vividly depicted in
his Grace Abounding; but, when that time came to him, he
turned again to his Bible with more living purpose—the book
to which, more than any other, his literary style was indebted for
its English clearness and force. 'I began,' he says, 'to look into
it with new eyes and read as I never did before. I was never
out of the Bible either by reading or meditation. ' So far as his
native genius was shaped and directed by external influence, it is
here we come upon that influence.
‘Buyan's English,' writes J. R. Green, “is the simplest and homeliest
English that has ever been used by any great English writer, but it is the
English of the Bible. He had lived in the Bible till its words became his
own. '
Such was the main, and, so far as we know, the only influence
of a literary sort under which Bunyan ever came, until he appeared
before the world as an author. This was in 1656, when he was
twenty-eight years of age, and then only in response to what he
felt to be the call of duty.
This first venture was brought about
in a somewhat unexpected way. When his intense and memorable
conflict of soul had passed into a more peaceful phase, he joined,
in 1653, the fellowship of a Christian church recently formed in
Bedford outside the national system. A year or two later, these
people prevailed upon him to exercise his gifts among them, and,
in this way, he came gradually into active service as a preacher


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Bunyan and the Quakers
169
9
in Bedford and the villages round. This brought him into collision
with some of the followers of George Fox, founder of the Society
of Friends, then a very aggressive body. Like Fox himself, his
followers went into places of worship and, in the presence of the
congregation, assailed the preacher. This they did with Bunyan,
at one of his services. He was not sufficiently mystical in his
teaching for them. They laid more stress upon the inward light
and less upon historic fact and external revelation. They would
have a Christ within, a resurrection within, a light within. He
also, was desirous of these, but he would not let go the historic
Christ, the historic facts of the Christian faith, or the Scriptures
of revelation by which to guide and test the inward light. A
A
Quaker sister, he says, 'did bid me in the audience of many “to
throw away the Scriptures. " To which I answered, “No, for then
the devil would be too hard for me. "
We are not here concerned with this controversy except in
80 far as to note the fact that, as its immediate result, it was re-
sponsible for the launching of Bunyan upon a career of authorship.
For the purpose of advancing what he held to be more scriptural
teaching on the subject in dispute, he published, in 1656, a duo-
decimo volume of 270 pages, entitled Some Gospel Truths Opened.
This book, written rapidly and in a heat, was published at Newport
Pagnell, and was immediately replied to by Edward Burrough, an
eminent Quaker. To this reply, Bunyan gave instant rejoinder in
a further volume of 280 pages, his second book following his first,
as he tells us, at only a few weeks' interval. These first literary
ventures are not specially characteristic of Bunyan's genius; but
they display the same ease of style, the same directness and
naturalness of speech, which he maintained to the end, and are
certainly remarkable as the productions of a working artisan of
scantiest education, who had not long left the distractions of a
soldier's life behind him.
Having thus ventured forth upon authorship in the interests
of theological controversy, in 1658 Bunyan appeared again with a
published treatise on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus,
in which we have foretokens of his matured style in such
characteristic touches as this: "The careless man lies like the
smith's dog at the foot of the anvil though the fire-sparks fly in
his face’; and this, “Some men despise the Lazaruses of our Lord
Jesus Christ because they are not gentlemen, because they cannot
with Pontius Pilate speak Hebrew, Greek and Latin. ' A further
work of no special note, issued by him in 1659, brings us to 1660,


## p. 170 (#186) ############################################

170
John Bunyan
6
when he entered upon the second and most important part of
his life and literary history.
The restoration of monarchy to the state and of episcopacy to
the church vitally affected the social and religious condition of
nonconformists, and Bunyan was almost the first man among them
to feel the change. In the November following the king's return in
May, he was committed to Bedford gaol for preaching at a farm-
house in the south of the county, and, as he was convicted under
the unrepealed Conventicle act of 1593, which required public
confession and promise of submission before release could follow
the term of imprisonment, he remained a prisoner for twelve
years, that is, till the king's declaration of indulgence in 1672.
So far as his literary history is concerned, these twelve years fall
into two equal parts of six years each, during the first of which
he published no fewer than nine of his books. The last of these,
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, which appeared in
1666, is the first of the four outstanding creations of his genius.
It is really his own autobiography, an intense record, written after
he had 'tarried long at Sinai to see the fire and the cloud and the
darkness,' and it has been recognised as one of the great books of
the world on religious experience, and not unworthy to take its
place by the side of the Confessions of Augustine. Another book
which preceded this by a year, entitled The Holy City, or the
New Jerusalem, is of interest to us as being a kind of foregleam
of that celestial city to which, in after days, he conducted the
pilgrims of his dream. At one time, there were no fewer than
sixty other nonconformists in prison with him under the new
Conventicle act of 1664, and they were accustomed to hold
religious services among themselves in the common room of the
county gaol. As he tells us in his preface to the book in question,
it was his turn one Sunday morning to speak to the rest; but he
felt so empty and spiritless that he thought he would not be able
to speak among them so much as five words of truth with light
and evidence. ' However, as he turned over the pages of his Bible,
in the book of Revelation, his eye lit upon the glowing picture of
the city of God coming down out of heaven, her light like unto
a stone most precious as it were a jasper stone clear as crystal.
Musing upon this glowing vision, seen by that other prisoner in
Patmos, Bunyan says, “Methought I perceived something of that
jasper in whose light this holy city is said to come or descend';
and the Lord helped him to set this great hope before his brethren:
we did all eat and were well-refreshed. ' But the matter did not
6


## p. 171 (#187) ############################################

Bunyan's Language
171
6
end there. When the sermon was over, the vision splendid rose
before his mind again :
the more I cast mine eye upon it the more I saw lie in it. Wherefore setting
myself to a more narrow search, through frequent prayer to God, what first
with doing and then with undoing, and after that with doing again, I thus did
finish it.
It has been truly said that, while Bunyan possessed in a
remarkable degree the gift of expressing himself in written words,
he had no appreciation of literature as such. In the preface
of the book before us, he explains his mental attitude. He
thinks his learned reader may blame him because he has ‘not
beautified his matter with acuteness of language,' and has not,
'either in the line or in the margent, given a cloud of sentences
from the learned fathers. ' As for the language of the learned, the
sentences and words which others use, he does not give them
because he has them not, nor has he read them : 'had it not been
for the Bible, I had not only not thus done it, but not at all. '
That is reason enough, but there is another behind it. Even if
he had had the learning of the learned Fathers,
'I durst not make use of ought thereof,' he says, "and that for fear lest that
grace and these gifts that the Lord hath given me, should be attributed to
their wits rather than the light of the Word and Spirit of God. '
This way of regarding the literary gift as heaven-descended,
therefore to be reverently used and not perverted to unworthy
ends, was Milton's as well as Bunyan's. When he put in print
a public pledge to execute his design of a great poem, Milton, at
the same time, said that he conceived of it
as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of
wine, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren
daughters, but by devout prayer to the Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all
utterance and Knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with all the hallowed
fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases.
This may not be the common way, but it was the puritan way
of regarding the endowments of man's richer nature as gifts of the
Spirit of God, as signs of his wider operation on the imagination
and heart of the world. In the preface to his Grace Abounding,
a book which, in some passages, seems as if it had been written
with a pen of fire, Bunyan touches again upon the question of the
relation of conscience to literature :
'I could,' he says, ' have stepped into a style much higher than this in which
I have bere discoursed, and could have adorned all things more than here I
have seemed to do; but I dare not. God did not play in convincing of me
wherefore I may not play in my relating of these experiences, but be plain and


## p. 172 (#188) ############################################

172
John Bunyan
simple, and lay down the thing as it was. He that liketh it let him receive it;
and he that does not, let him produce a better. '
While during the first six years of his prison life, as we have
said, no fewer than nine books came from Bunyan's pen, for the
next five years, so far as we know, that pen was laid aside. It
was not till 1671 that he broke this long silence and published a
book which he entitled A Confession of my Faith, and a Reason
of my Practice. This work, while giving a reasoned statement of
his religious opinions, was, at the same time, a kind of apologia
pro vita sua, a vindication of his conduct in resolutely standing
by his convictions for a long time, while so weighty an argument
as over eleven years' imprisonment was continually urging him
to pause and consider again and again the grounds and foundation
of those principles for which he thus had suffered. He maintains
that he is a peaceable and obedient subject, and he appeals to his
enemies themselves to judge whether there is anything in the
opinions set forth savouring either of heresy or of rebellion ren-
dering him deserving of almost twelve years' imprisonment.
Still, he will suffer rather than yield. He goes on to say:
If nothing will do, unl I make of my conscience a continual butchery and
slaughter-shop, unless patting out my own eyes I commit me to the blind to
lead me, I have determined, the Almighty God being my help and shield, yet
to suffer, if frail life might continue so long, even till the moss shall grow on
mine eye-brows rather than thus to violate my faith and principles.
Deliverance came at length. Seeing that ‘no fruit came of
these forceful courses,' in 1672 the king, apart from parliament,
issued a declaration of indulgence, under power of which licences
to preach were granted to nonconformist ministers, and to Bunyan
among the rest. He was at once elected pastor of the church in
Bedford of which, since 1653, he had been a private member; and
he held that position, with freedom from state interference, for
the next three years. At the end of that time, trouble broke forth
again. The declaration of indulgence, being an unusual, and, to
many in the nation, an unwelcome, exercise of the royal pre-
rogative, was withdrawn, and, as a consequence, nonconformists'
licences were recalled. Bunyan, therefore, being once more
exposed to all the penalties of the Conventicle act, was arrested
and sent to prison for six months, this time to the small town
gaol on Bedford bridge. It was during this second and shorter
imprisonment that he wrote the first part of The Pilgrim's
Progress from this World to that which is to come.
This allegory appeared in the early part of 1678, but received


## p. 173 (#189) ############################################

The Pilgrim's Progress 173
6
characteristic additions in a later edition of the same year, and,
again, in the third edition, which appeared in 1679. In the first
edition, there was no account of Christian breaking his mind
to his wife and children, no Worldly Wiseman, no confession by
Christian to Goodwill at the Wicket-gate, of his own turning
aside. Christian's discourse at the palace, the name of which was
Beautiful, was added afterwards, as were the accounts of Mr By-
Ends, his conversation and his rich relations, of Lot’s wife as a
pillar of salt and of Diffidence the wife of giant Despair. The
description of the reception of the pilgrims on the further shore
of the river was heightened, also, by the coming of the King's
trumpeters to salute them with ten thousand welcomes, with
shouting and sound of trumpet. On the other hand, some
characteristic marginalia, such as 'O brave Talkative! ' 'Christian
snibbeth his fellow,' 'Hopeful swaggers,' disappeared after the
first edition.
The question of the originality of The Pilgrim's Progress, as
to how far its author was indebted to previous allegorists, has
been raised again and again. Comparisons have been instituted
between this book and de Guileville's Pilgrimage of the Sowle,
in which we have the vision of a city in the heavens acting as an
incentive to a pilgrimage on earth, and in the course of which
we come upon a wicket-gate and a reception in the house of
Grâce Dieu, recalling that of Christian in the house called
Beautiful. That there are ideas in common is obvious enough ;
but the probable explanation is that they had one common
source. The looking for a city with eternal foundations was a
New Testament idea as accessible to Bunyan as to the monk of
Chaliz; while the house of Grâce Dieu and the Palace Beautiful,
like the house of Mercy in The Faerie Queene, may well have
been suggested by the old houses of entertainment prepared for
pilgrims or travellers on their way. Spenser sets forth in allegory
the dangers, the conflicts and the final victory of the Red Cross
knight of holiness; but, apart from the question of the proba-
bility or otherwise of Bunyan's having access to The Faerie Queene,
it may be noted that there is one important contrast between
this allegory and his own. Spenser dealt mainly with abstract
virtues and qualities, his book is an epic of the struggles and
triumph of truth ; whereas Bunyan, like Chaucer, drew personal
portraits and gave concrete presentations of vices and virtues.
It would not be difficult to show that Spenser was weakest pre-
cisely where Bunyan was strongest.


## p. 174 (#190) ############################################

174
John Bunyan
Besides the two books referred to others have been mentioned
in which we have the regular introduction of the dream and the
allegory, such as The Palice of Honour by Gawin Douglas, The
Goldyn Targe by William Dunbar, The Bouge of Courte by John
Skelton and The Passetyme of Pleasure by Stephen Hawes. But,
before asking whether Bunyan could have been influenced by
these or similar works, we must remember that he was in prison
when the idea of the pilgrim journey first laid hold of him
and would not let him go. And, even if he had thought of it
beforehand, the literature of the subject which he might have
studied by way of preparation for his theme was not easily
accessible in those days to peasants and working artisans. But,
apart from these considerations, we have Bunyan's own express
declarations on the subject. The originality of the work was
questioned in his own day: 'Some say The Pilgrim's Progress is
not mine'; but he will have none of this : ‘Manner and matter,
too, was all mine own, nor was it unto any mortal known till I had
done it. The whole and every whit is mine. ' When the vision
descended on him it surprised no one more than himself. He
tells us that he was writing another book about the way and race
of saints in his own day, when he
Fell suddenly into an Allegory
About their Journey, and the way to Glory.
Vivid fancies came so thick and fast upon him, that he resolved
to put them down;
This done, I twenty more had in my Crown,
And they again began to multiply,
Like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly.
It has been said that The Pilgrim's Progress was the last English
book written without thought of the reviewer ; its author goes
further, and tells us it was written without thought even of a
possible reader:
I did not think
To shew to all the World my Pen and Ink
. . . nor did I undertake
Thereby to please my Neighbour; no not I;
I did it mine own self to gratifie.
This is the author's own account of the growth of his great master-
piece, and it goes far to account for its possession of that charm
which lays hold of the hearts of men, they know not how.
But, while the book thus sprang into being, effortless and fair
like a flower, it is not wanting in proportion or dramatic unity.


## p. 175 (#191) ############################################

The Pilgrim's Progress 175
The opening sentence lays hold of the reader, and, thenceforward,
there is no unmown grass of weariness to wade through, no
wilderness of tedium in which to wander. There are episodes
by the way, but they never draw us so far aside that we forget
the main story-on the contrary, they contribute to its effect.
The book is remarkable, too, for the reality of its impersonations,
for the rapidity and power with which its characters are drawn.
They are no mere shadowy abstractions moving about in a mystical
region far away from us, but real men and women living in our
own every-day world. By a few strokes only, sometimes by the
mere giving of a name, an abstraction rises up before us, clothed
in flesh and blood. A contemporary tells us that Bunyan was
'accomplished with an excellent discerning of persons, and it is
this keen power of insight that gives permanent value to his
work. He had the discriminating eye and, also, the broad sympathy
and keen sense of humour which accompany that gift. Further,
while he gives us quaint turns of thought, pithy expressions
such as still linger on many a countryside, and revelations of
character, which we recognise at once, the world of outside nature,
with its manifold phases, comes in to complete the whole. We
have the hill with its toilsome ascent, the mountain with its far-off
vision of the city, the fearsome glen with its shadowy shapes.
Then, at other times, we walk in the King's gardens, into which
the children of the land of Beulah go to gather nosegays for the
pilgrims, bringing them with much affection. ' Our senses, too, are
regaled with the fragrance of spikenard and saffron, calamus and
cinnamon, with trees of 'frankincense, myrrh, together with aloes
with all chief spices. And, through the interlacings of green
'
leaves, we hear, besides, the melodious notes of the country birds
and the sweet sound of distant bells.
As to Bunyan's subsequent influence on English life and
literature, it is to be remembered that, above everything else, his
desire was to be a religious teacher, that it would have been
against his conscience to aim at mere literary distinction and
It would have gratified him beyond expression could
he have known that The Pilgrim's Progress is one of the
few books which act as a religious bond for the whole of
English Christendom. As a creator of fictitious personalities, he
has charmed the world, weaving them into a story of universal
interest and lasting vitality. The most perfect and complex
of fairy tales, as Hallam called the book, it has not only
won the hearts of children at an age when its spiritual
6
success.


## p. 176 (#192) ############################################

176
Yohn Bunyan
>
6
meaning is little perceived, but it has also been the inter-
preter of life to men perplexed with life's problems. This is
the great merit of the book,' said Dr Johnson, 'that the most
cultivated man cannot find anything to praise more highly, and
the child knows nothing more amusing’; and even Swift could
testify that he had been better entertained and more improved
by a few pages of this allegory than by more pretentious books
of another kind. Still, the literary class, as a whole, did not
at the time, or long after, give the book appreciative welcome.
Cowper was afraid to introduce Bunyan's name into his poetry
lest he should provoke a sneer. Addison, in disparaging fashion,
said that he never knew an author that had not his admirers, for
Bunyan pleased as many readers as Dryden or Tillotson ; and
Mrs Montague, following in his wake, called Bunyan and Quarles
'those classics of the artificers in leather,' laughing at them as
forming the particular entertainment of her neighbours, the
Kentish squires. On the other hand, Mrs Piozzi asks, 'Who shall
say that Lillo, Bunyan and Antonio Correggio were not naturally
equal to Jonson, Michael Angelo and the Archbishop of Cambrai? '
And Horace Walpole evidently thought he was paying Edmund
Spenser a compliment when he spoke of him as 'John Bunyan
in rhyme. '
While the learned class differed widely in judgment, the general
world of readers never wavered in their favourable estimate of
the book. Between 1678, when it first appeared, and 1778, thirty-
three editions of part I and fifty-nine editions of parts I and II
together were issued, and then publishers left off counting. It is
computed that one hundred thousand copies were sold in Bunyan's
own lifetime. Nor was its literary influence confined to his own
country. Three years after its publication, it was reprinted by
the puritan colony in America, there receiving, as Bunyan himself
tells us, much loving countenance. ' And there it has continued
ever since, in untold number of editions; and, with Shakespeare,
it forms part of the literary bond which unites the two English-
speaking peoples on each side of the Atlantic.
Bunyan's allegory was translated into Dutch and French in
1682. The first edition in German appeared in 1694, many
successive editions following in its wake.
F. H. Ranke tells us
that, as a young man at Nürnberg, he met with a copy of an
edition of 1703, translated from the Dutch, which made such an
impression upon him that he formed classes of young men for the
study of the book; and Gustav Kettner suggests that, in two


## p. 177 (#193) ############################################

The Holy War
177
of Schiller's poems, Der Pilgrim and Die Sehnsucht, Bunyan's
influence is distinctly traceable. Jung-Stilling also records with
wbat pleasure he read the book; Wieland, too, after telling an
English traveller at Weimar how The Pilgrim's Progress had
delighted him, went on to say, 'In that book I learned to read
English ; English literature had great influence upon me, your
puritan writings particularly. '
Other translations of Bunyan's dream have gone on multiplying
down to the present time. There are now versions of The Pilgrim's
Progress in no fewer than one hundred and eight different languages
and dialects, so that it is no mere poetical figure to say, as has
been said, that it follows the Bible from land to land as the singing
of birds follows the dawn.
Between 1656, when he gave his first book to the world, and
1688, when, a few weeks before his death, he saw his last book
partly through the press, Bunyan sent forth, altogether, no fewer
than sixty different publications as the product of his pen. While
all these may be truly said to bear more or less the stamp and
impress of his genius, there are four outstanding books which,
by common consent, are recognised as surpassing all the rest
in impressiveness and creative powerGrace Abounding, The
Pilgrim's Progress, The Holy War and The Life and Death
of Mr Badman. It is generally agreed that, in point of personal
interest and popular power, The Holy War contrasts unfavour-
ably with the story of Christian and Christiana. Still, in the later
book, also, there are fine passages and lofty conceptions, though
it moves in a more abstract region than its predecessor. It is
interesting, also, as throwing light upon Bunyan's own military
experiences. The martial deeds of the various captains engaged
in the siege of Mansoul are, doubtless, reminiscences of days in
Newport garrison when he came in contact with the preaching
and praying majors and captains of the parliamentary army.
Apart from these things, however, Macaulay’s verdict, as we all
know, was that, if The Pilgrim's Progress had not been
written, The Holy War would have been our greatest English
allegory.
The remaining work-The Life and Death of Mr Badman
-though disfigured by grotesque stories and somewhat coarse
passages, yet bears the characteristic marks of Bunyan's genius
and is, admittedly, a work of power. He himself intended this
book to be the companion picture to that of his dream; as the
12
E. L. VII.
CH, VII.


## p. 178 (#194) ############################################

178
John Bunyan
one set forth the progress of a Christian from this world to glory,
the other was to present the life and death of the ungodly, their
travel through this world to perdition. It is constructed on a
different plan, the former being in continuous narrative, and this
in dialogue form, disfigured by didactic discourses on the various
vices of a bad man's life. It is a picture of low English life as
Bunyan saw it with his own eyes in a commonplace country town
in the degraded days of a licentious king, and, as such, it has its
historical value. Froude has given a forcibly expressed estimate
of the work. To him it is a remarkable story:
The drawing is so good, the details so minute, the conception so unex-
aggerated that we are disposed to believe that we must have a real history
before us. But such supposition is only a compliment to the skill of the
composer. Throughout we are on solid earth, amidst real experiences.
Bunyan conceals nothing, assumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. There
the figure stands : a picture of a man in the rank of English life with which
Bunyan was most familiar, travelling along the primrose path to the everlasting
bonfire, as the way to Emmanuel's Land was through the Slough of Despond
and the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
In passing from John Bunyan to Andrew Marvell we are
conscious of making a great transition. There is a sense in
which they have both been classed as puritans—Bunyan as the
great puritan allegorist and Marvell as the one puritan of his
age besides Milton who acquired distinction in poetry. They may
even, through literary association, have been personally known
to each other, for Nathanael Ponder, the first publisher of The
Pilgrim's Progress, was also, about the same time, publisher of
the second part of Marvell’s Rehearsal Transprosed. But, if we
class both as puritans, we must do so with a difference ; for, when
Marvell was born, in 1621, his father was parson of the parish of
Winestead in Holderness, and all his life, as his son tells us, he
was 'a conformist to the rules and ceremonies of the Church of
England, though, I confess, none of the most over-running and
eager in them. ' Moreover, this somewhat measured description
of the ecclesiastical standing-place of the elder Andrew may very
well be applied, also, to that of the younger. It is true that he
was for three years tutor in the family of lord Fairfax, the parlia-
mentary general, that he was Milton's assistant as Latin secretary
to Cromwell and that he was in close personal association with
many parliamentarians ; but it is also true that he numbered
among his friends prince Rupert and Richard Lovelace. And,
while he wrote an Ode upon Cromwell : Return from Ireland, it
must be remembered that in the same ode occur the memorable


## p. 179 (#195) ############################################

Andrew Marvell
179
stanzas descriptive of Charles I's kingly bearing on the scaffold,
recording how
He nothing common did, or mean,
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try.
Nor called the gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate bis helpless right;
But bowed his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.
Then, too, it may be further said that, though in strenuous and
earnest language he resisted the attempts of Parker, afterwards
bishop of Oxford, to stir up persecution against nonconformists,
he himself expressly declares that he was not in the nonconformist
ranks, that he merely wrote, to use his own words, what I think
befits all men in humanity, Christianity, and prudence towards
dissenters. '
Marvell, born 31 March 1621, was educated at the Hull
grammar school, of which his father became master in 1624, and,
at the age of twelve, by the aid of an exhibition attached to the
school, entered Cambridge, where he matriculated as a sizar of
Trinity college, 14 December 1633. On 13 April 1638 he was
admitted a scholar of his college and took his B. A. degree the
same year.
His contributions to literature may be classified as con-
sisting mainly of his Poems, which, for the most part, belong to
the years 1650–2; the Satires, which he wrote on public men
and public affairs in the reign of Charles II ; the News-letters,
which he regularly addressed to his constituents in Hull after his
election as M. P. for the borough in 1659, and which extend from
1660 to the time of his death in 1678; and his Controversial
Essays on ecclesiastical questions, written at intervals between
1672 and 1677.
It is upon his poems that Marvell's literary reputation mainly
rests ; yet, curiously enough, these were scarcely known at all to
his own contemporaries. Some of them were circulated in MS
after the manner of the time, and were probably read by Milton
and other personal friends; but, with few exceptions, they were
not given to the world in printed form till three years after his
death, when the small folio of 1681 appeared. Three or four
fugitive pieces were printed earlier. Two poems, one in Greek
and the other in Latin, addressed to the king, appeared as early
12-2


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180
Andrew Marvell
as 1637 in Musa Cantabrigiensis; an occasional poem was printed
in Lachrymae Musarum in 1649 ; one was prefixed to Lovelace's
Poems the same year; and one to a new edition of Milton's
Paradise Lost in 1671.
Marvell, like his friend Milton and other educated Englishmen,
set forth on the accustomed course of European travel when he was
twenty-one. From 1642 to 1646, he was abroad in Holland, France,
Italy and Spain ; but, beyond the fact that he was in Rome in 1645,
we know nothing of his movements during these four years, save
that Milton testifies that he spent them to very good purpose and
the gaining of those four languages. ' From 1646, he passes out of
sight till we find him again at Nun Appleton house in Yorkshire,
the seat of lord Fairfax, where, from 1650 to 1652, he acted as
tutor to Fairfax's daughter Mary, a girl of twelve. Nun Appleton
house, where Marvell thus came to reside for a while, is situated
in the Ainsty of York, in a pleasant tract of country watered by
the Ouse, the Wharfe and the Nidd. It was, indeed, an ideal
place for a poet, for there nature seemed to conspire with genius
to bring to perfection the flowering time of the poet's life; and
it was here, under lord Fairfax's roof, that, so far as literature was
concerned, Marvell did his best and most enduring work. Judging
by the dates concerned, we may conclude that the first product
of his pen, at this time, was the Horatian Ode upon Cromwells
Return from Ireland; and the title itself suggests one powerful
influence which had much to do with the development of Marvell's
poetic gift. Though classed among the poets of the reign of
Charles II, it is generally recognised now that he really belongs
to the earlier time, that his true place is with Herrick, Lovelace
and Wither, rather than with Waller, Sedley, Dorset or Rochester.
And, while he came under the influence of Donne, an influence
paramount during the years of his Cambridge life, he, like Milton,
was earliest shaped by his classical training, especially by his
study of Horace, his chosen companion and friend. Of his first
really great work, the Horatian Ode, it has been said that, better
than anything else in the language, it gives an idea of a grand
Horatian measure, moving, as it does, from end to end, with the
solemn beat of its singular metre, strophe and antistrophe with
the epode following. All its stanzas combine force with grace
and originality with charm, leading Palgrave to say of it that it
is 'beyond doubt one of the finest in the language, and more in
Milton's style than has been reached by any other poet. '
Then, too, at a time when poets were not conspicuous for their


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The Garden
181
6
love of nature herself, except so far as she could furnish similes
and illustrations for poetic use, Marvell was an anticipator of
Wordsworth in his sheer enjoyment of open air and country
life for enjoyment's sake. In this, also, the influence of the
Roman poet may, possibly, be seen. We have foregleams of
some of Marvell's most beautiful poems in the second of
Horace's Epodes, where he tells us how delightful it is to be
among the sheep, the bees, the vines and fruit trees of his
farm among the Sabine hills, and where he confides to us how
willingly he would leave the luxuries of the city for the peaceful
surroundings and charm of country life. In like manner, Marvell
encamps his mind among trees and gardens where the world
toucheth him not, and exclaims, in joyous freedom of soul,
Bind me, ye woodbines in your twines,
Curle me about, ye gadding vines.
In his delight in gardens, fields and woods, he is the poet
of the open air and the country-side. In his poem entitled The
Garden, it has been well said that 'he throws himself into the
very soul of the garden with the imaginative intensity of Shelley
in The West Wind. ' Here he has found Fair Quiet and Innocence
her sister dear. No city life for him.
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.
Wondrous is the life to be lived here, where
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The lascious clusters of the vine,
Upon my month do crush their wine;
The nectaren and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
and where, when he tries to pass, he is ensnared with flowers.
The Garden is composed in the short lines of the octosyllabic
couplet. It is free, however, from the diffuseness which the facility
of this form of composition too easily favours, possibly from the
fact that it is an English version of lines first composed in Latin
by Marvell himself: the classical mould exercising restraint upon
mere unchartered freedom. Yet there is in it, in spite of this
restraint, the poet's genuine love of gardens and woods, of birds
and flowers.
Yet he is no merely sensuous epicure, even in his delight in
nature. His poem entitled The Coronet shows he is not insensible
how, in human life, the real ever falls short of the ideal; and, in his
Dialogue between the Soul and the Body, he makes us realise the


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182
Andrew Marvell
meaning of the struggle evermore going on between the lower
passions and the higher nature of man.